Email *your* comments to San Francisco officials & media cited below.
Mayor Brown was pied to protest police "street sweeps" of homeless people,
and the lack of municipal funds to help end homelesssness.
FWD
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Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 20:02:42 -0800
From: agit-prop <agit-prop@energy-net.org>
To: BBB Correspondents <bbb_apple@hotmail.com>
Subject: "Cherry Pie 3" Maxed: 6 Months In Jail For Pieing Mayor
of San Francisco
To the alternative media, BBB correspondents, and our supporters: this is a
quick update on the result of today's sentencing. We are in shock, and
scrambling to focus on what is needed in terms of support and action for
our jailed comrades. Rahula and Justin have already been jailed, while
Gerry has been allowed two weeks to seek medical treatment for a possible
brain tumor, after which Judge Goldsmith ordered him to raise bail to the
tune of $20,000.
A more detailed release will be sent by late this evening or tomorrow
morning. In the meantime, please feel free to contact the Bay Area press
to express your opinion:
========================================================
chronletters@sfgate.comhome@sfgate.commorse@examiner.comchronletters@sfgate.comeditor@examiner.comletters@examiner.comletters@sfweekly.com
========================================================
Mayor Willie Brown's office: 415-554-6141
District Attorney Terence Hallinan: 415-553-1752
========================================================
__________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, February 24, 1999
CONTACTS: Biotic Baking Brigade 415-626-4942; via email at
bbb_apple@hotmail.com
San Francisco - When San Francisco's Mayor, Willie Brown, testified against
the three homelessness activists who had thrown pies at him last November,
he repeatedly urged the court to make an example of the defendants. The
trial ended in a split verdict. The jurors deliberated for over nine
hours, finally acquitting the defendants of the heavier charge of
assaulting a public official, while convicting them of simple battery.
Today, Judge Ernest H. Goldsmith complied with the Mayor's demand,
sentencing all three pie-throwers to the maximum penalty of six months in
the county jail.
Spectators who managed to get a seat in the crowded courtroom
voiced their disapproval as the draconian sentences were pronounced. Even
Rahula Janowski was sentenced to six months, despite the testimony the
Mayor's friend Garland Rosario, that he tackled Rahula in the wake of the
pie-ing, snapping her collar-bone and creating in a permanent disability.
Janowski's attorney, Katya Komisaruk, told the judge that this sentence was
a "shanda fur die goyim," an embarrassment for the community.
All three defendants and their attorneys made statements in court,
before Goldsmith issued the sentences. Gross said simply, "Poverty is
violence." Livernois also focused on the continuing disastrous impact of
the Mayor's policies toward the homeless community. And Janowski quoted:
"The psychological importance of a planned campaign against the nuisance of
begging should not be underestimated. Beggars often force their poverty
upon people in the most repulsive way...if this sight disappears from
view... people will feel that things are becoming more stable again, and
that the economy is improving once more." Janowski pointed to the
similarity between this rhetoric--from Nazi Germany's Ministry of
Propaganda--and that of some of San Francisco's civic leaders, and reminded
listeners that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.
The Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB) remains undeterred by the outcome
of the case. Agent Apple, speaking for the BBB General Command, Ecotopia
Division, issued the following communique in response to the harsh
sentences: "The pie is cast. We shall not rest until justice, as well as
dessert, is served."
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* Friends of the BBB: 3288 21st #92, San Francisco, CA, 94110, Amerika. *
* bbb_apple@hotmail.com 415.267.5976 *
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